Watch DVDs and videos for free with VLC Media Player

I travel with my laptop, and I recently tried to watch movies on my computer’s built-in DVD drive. Unfortunately, my Windows desktop didn’t include any software for playing a DVD. Even Microsoft’s nearly-ubiquitous Windows Media Player requires the addition of costly DVD decoders to play DVDs. Where was I going to find a cost-effective solution for watching movies?

I looked for an open source option and found VideoLAN Client (http://www.videolan.org). I was surprised to find software that supported so many video formats and operating systems. VideoLAN Client (VLC) supports DVD menus and subtitles, and I have complete control over the picture quality, the audio equalization, and the available hotkeys.

I found VLC easy to use, and I was very satisfied using VLC as a powerful and flexible DVD player on my laptop. I even used VLC’s DVD playing capabilities and hotkeys to control a video presentation at a trade show booth! VLC’s hotkey feature allowed me to start, stop, and play the video at full screen, providing me with complete control over the video display. Watching DVD movies on my laptop during long flights was simply a bonus!

As I started looking into VLC’s additional features, I found much more hiding under the surface. For example, VLC can transcode video directly from DVD to a file on my hard drive. This allowed me to transfer my personal DVDs onto my hard drive. I now can leave my physical DVDs at home and not worry about losing or damaging them when traveling. A spinning DVD drive can also rapidly shorten a laptop’s battery, so this feature allowed me to get some extra work done on those long coast-to-coast flights. This same transcode feature can also convert your DVDs to Video iPod format, saving you money over commercial conversion utilities.

For the propeller head, VLC also includes many other ways to control the media output. There’s a command line option for configuration and control of VLC’s operation. VLC also includes a small web server that can control your media from any web browser. I can launch playlists, modify the volume, and control the playback of a movie; all from this web-based front-end!

Developers can also take advantage of VLC’s ActiveX specification to include media into their own applications, and an application programming interface (API) is available for integration with external applications. A comprehensive VideoLAN Wiki is online to assist with development information, transcoding options, streaming capabilities, and other VLC options. There’s something here for everyone, and this extensive online documentation repository is growing all the time.

Once you give VideoLAN Client a try, you may find that your own media player looks a little rough around the edges. If you’re like me, you may find yourself with a new media player that provides many more capabilities with none of the cost!